Death On the Flop (18 page)

“Maybe I’m tougher than I thought,” I admitted.

He smiled then, crow’s feet crinkling. I knew we were okay again, but I really did want to have a serious talk with him about the drinking sometime soon.

“Maybe we both are,” Frank said softly.

Walking into the Galaxy casino reminded me of the
time I took my cousin’s kids to Disney World. I remember there was some tortuous rollercoaster that sped through the pitch black tunnel, dodging falling asteroids, stars, aliens and manufactured planets at the speed of light. I remember telling my nine-year-old second cousin, as she screamed bloody murder, that I had paid for this, so it had to be fun. I’d ended up wearing someone’s vomit and deciding that theme parks were designed for the masochistic. I had the same revelation as I dodged a twelve foot tall ape from
Planet of the Apes
who tried to hand me a coupon for an eatery.

As Frank and I wound our way through the slot machines, my hand brushed the hand of a player. I jumped—his skin was cold, gummy and creepy. I looked down to apologize anyway and gasped. It was a Martian from
Mars Attacks!
Fortunately, it was a wax figure and not the real thing.

An elderly man sitting at the opposite slot machine cackled with glee. “Watching folks do that is more fun than feeding this thing quarters. Cheaper too!”

I rolled my eyes. Everyone has their own brand of entertainment, I suppose. Frank put his hand in the small of my back to move me on. It wasn’t the only time we passed wax figures. Chewbacca and R2-D2 were standing at a craps table. A dead ringer for Neil Armstrong, in full astronaut regalia, was sitting at the bar.

I’d wondered a couple of times during my trip to Las Vegas if I weren’t in the Twilight Zone. Now I really was.

“This would not be my first choice of hotel or casino on The Strip,” I told Frank.

He shrugged, pointing at a costumed group of tourists. “There’s a lot of Trekkies out there. And, I think the alien craze is just behind the poker craze in popularity. Just think, playing poker next to an alien. Must be someone’s dream come true.” Sure enough, at one of the Hold ’Em tables was the alien that popped out of Sigourney Weaver’s stomach. I’m not kidding.

“What’s the plan?” I asked Frank. Time to focus.

“I’ll go ask around at the poker tables. I’ll assume that he dealt Hold ’Em but who knows.” Frank looked around. “Go over to that Space Shuttle bar and chat up the waitresses you think serves the poker tables. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of them will have been here when Stan was dealing.”

I nodded. Interesting that I was the one to go to the bar. He was trying. Or maybe he was just hungover.

I wandered over. At eleven in the morning, it was kind of early for a drink, but apparently I was one of few who thought so. Only one stool was available, and of course it was next to Neil. I tried to ignore him but he was looking right at me.

“Creepy, huh?” said a cocktail waitress wearing Spock ears and a Starship Enterprise uniform. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to herself or the astronaut. I went for a vague. “Got that right.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how they make their eyes look so real. It’s almost as if they follow you,” she continued. “Someone told me it takes a whole month to put in their hair. It’s real, you know. Even the hair on their arms and stuff.”

Of course I couldn’t resist looking at Neil. He was holding his helmet under his arm and seemed to be smiling at me. Hmm. His hair, shot with just a bit of gray at the temples, did look pretty real.

“Cool,” I said, again trying not to offend her since she seemed so proud. “But I guess you’ll get so used to it once you work here for a while that you don’t notice him anymore.”

“Oh, no, I won’t,” she grinned haplessly. “I’ve already worked here five years and I’m not used to him yet.”

I laughed more at my luck than her comment. Bingo. She’d worked here with Stan.

“Can I get you something to drink, darlin’?” She asked. I shook my head and she did too. “Nah, you don’t look like an early morning drunk. I guess you’re just biding your time while your baby plays Hold ’Em, huh?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Not hard.
Everybody
plays Hold ’Em now. It’s like a national addiction. I wouldn’t be surprised if they take out half the blackjack, craps and roulette tables and put in more poker tables by next year.”

“It sure is all over the TV anyway, especially that Steely Stan guy. Has he got charisma or what?” I winked at her.

She leaned in with her secret. “You know he used to work here?”

I gasped and held my hand to my chest. “Here? In this casino?”

She nodded. “I waited on the table where he was the dealer.”

“No kidding?” I leaned in too. “What was he like? I have such a huge crush on him.”

“Everybody does, darlin’, at least anyone with estrogen.” She giggled. “He is even sexier in person.”

Gag. If you like raving chauvinistic egomaniacs with spastic fashion sense, he’s a prize for sure.

“It just seemed like destiny when he got that sponsorship and could quit and play Hold ’Em professionally. Nobody deserved it more.”

I nodded. Uh-huh. “Who sponsored him?”

She looked at me a little suspiciously. Wrong question. Guess I should have asked how big his schlong was instead. “Some vegetable company,” she muttered, desultory.

I shrugged like I couldn’t care less and held my poker face. Good practice for tonight. I guess it worked, because she went back to extolling Stan’s virtues, which revolved around how many times he pinched her ass in a night.

Vegetable company would likely translate into produce supplier. Likely Fresh Foods. But what was Fresh Foods doing sponsoring a poker player? What does a televised royal flush do for spinach sales?

Even though it didn’t make sense yet, this was a big break, a connection that might mean something someday.

I wanted to jump up and down and wave my arms at Frank, but instead I had to keep the dingy waitress in conversation for another ten minutes until someone at a table did just that to get her attention for a drink. She trotted away with a promise to return with more about Stan.

Since I figured I’d already gotten all she knew of value, I made a break for it. Frank was playing at a table in the dead center of the room, so I loitered as close as I could get and tried to catch his eye. He looked everywhere but at me.

He was either learning a lot of good stuff or he was winning. Either way it looked like I would be cooling my heels for a while. I visited the gift shop, but since a Martian toe ring didn’t particularly appeal to me, I wandered on. What did people who didn’t gamble do in Vegas, anyway? I guess one could go to see Cirque du Soleil or Carey in the Women of Wall Street, but if I just went from show to show I think my butt would get sore from overuse. Of course, come to think of it, poker playing involved a lot of sitting, but maybe the adrenaline rush of winning would provide a brief aerobic interlude. I suppose there was shopping here, but unless you came from the Ozarks, I can’t imagine they would have shops here that you couldn’t find within a couple hundred miles of your own hometown. I took the elevator up to the fifteenth floor for the heck of it and tried to catch a peek in a room to see if the beds were in the shape of flying saucers.

When a security goon ambled by and gave me a long look, I decided I’d worn out that form of entertainment. I hightailed it to the elevator lobby, hoping the news didn’t have a full description of the call girl killer. I didn’t know how ballsy Daniel Conner would be.

I jumped in the elevator before the doors even fully opened and scurried to the far corner, nearly impaling myself on the cart that the poor bellboy tried to pull out of the way. I murmured an apology. We traveled in embarrassed silence until the doors slid open on the second floor. No one got on, and I couldn’t see anyone waiting from where I stood, but I could hear a man’s urgent whisper. “I told you, I just need a little more time.”

The bellhop, who could likely see the whisperer, drew his eyebrows together and shrugged. The elevator doors shut just as the man whined, “Pleeese.”

Those long ee’s certainly sounded familiar. I looked at the bellhop’s name tag. “Ahmad? Did you happen to see that guy?”

He nodded.

“What did he look like?”

Ahmad drew his eyebrows together again.

“Was he a white guy, short, fat with a balding head, wearing a bad suit?”

Ahmad nodded.

“Was he talking to another guy, tall, handsome, black hair, blue eyes, good suit?”

Ahmad narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

Uh-huh. He spoke English as well as understood it. I might have asked a little too intensely—it might have been slightly unnerving. He’d probably be reporting me to the security goons as soon as we hit the lobby. I had to go for the Oscar. I jammed my hands on my hips. “Come on, Ahmad, tell me, please. The fat guy’s my husband, see, and I know he’s having an affair with that man.” I paused to sob. Ahmad looked sick. I grabbed his arm just as the elevator came to rest at the first floor. “Please, tell me the truth and I’ll let you go.”

Shaking his head madly, Ahmad was trying to flop his arm loose of my grip and roll the cart out at the same time. I jumped on the cart and let him roll me out of the elevator. He looked panicked. “I no see other man. Fat man talked to someone behind corner.”

Damn. It might have been Conner, it might not. It had definitely been his fat friend, Pete, though. The more I heard that whine in my mind, the more I was sure of it. I jumped off the bell cart and spun around to press the up button. I can’t say I didn’t consider going to find Frank and tell him, but I didn’t do it long. I knew if I had any chance of seeing who Pudgy Pete was talking to, it had to be now.

The elevator slid open and I had to resist the temptation to push a trio of elderly women out of the way. They tottered into the elevator and took so long, the doors started to close. I threw my arm out, and when that didn’t stop the doors, I jammed my torso through. The doors bounced off my right boob. I jumped in before they snapped shut.

“Oh, dear, are you alright?” One of the nice old gals asked. I felt bad for breathing down the grannies’ necks when they were so considerate of me.

“You’ve got to be careful,” another added. “You’d better take care of a chest like that, right, girls?”

Huh? I looked down at that part of my anatomy, and noticed the whole group had already beaten me to it. Four gray heads nodded in agreement. I was speechless.

“Are you a dancer, dear?” the third granny asked.

“Uh, no, ma’am.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“Nothing right now.”

They all tsked. “You might look into dancing then. We were dancers here in Vegas in the boom in the fifties. Vegas was living high off the craze for the atomic bomb. Remember those wigs that were shaped like mushroom clouds, we wore with our bikinis, girls?”

They all nodded and started reminiscing. I was still dumbstruck. Finally, the one pushing the “door open” button remembered I was standing there. She took her arthritic finger with its three inch crimson nails off the button. “What floor did you want, dear?” I pressed the second floor button as we started to move.

“We’re here for a reunion and just went to see that new show ‘Women of Wall Street.’ What a blast. Talk about a surprise ending!”

I forced a smile. I’d changed my mind about Vegas.

The Twilight Zone had nothing on this place. Nothing at all.

 
The second floor looked deserted when I walked off
the elevator. The black iridescent carpet decorated with sparkles emulating stars started to waver as I looked left and right. Was it a special effect? No. I realized I felt light-headed and let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I was going to have to stop that if I wanted to stay conscious.

I didn’t hear anything except my blood roaring in my ears. That was when I understood that it had been stupid to come up here alone. I tiptoed unsteadily to the right where a narrow hallway lead to what I assumed were conference rooms. I peeked around the corner, then I backtracked and went left where the ceiling opened up to a large area that could’ve been lifted from the set of
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
. I peered at a space pod hanging from the ceiling and wondered if it was really moving or if I was holding my breath again.

A hand snaked around my waist from behind. I screamed. Another hand clamped down on my mouth. I bit the hand and snapped my heel up to kick at the body.

“Oof.” The hands freed me. I spun around to see Frank sinking to the floor with his hands on his groin.

I fell to my knees and touched Frank on the shoulders. His eyes were closed. I slid my hand to his face, and he moaned again.

“I am so sorry. I didn’t know it was you!”

“I was stupid. You did what you should,” Frank grunted, opening his eyes. “I’m just glad you didn’t have those damned high-heeled boots on.”